


Nameday

by Miss_M



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Angst, Backstory, Birthday, Catharsis, Childhood, Childhood Trauma, Emotional Hurt, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Pre-Canon, Swordfighting, Temper Tantrums
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 08:54:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26849239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_M/pseuds/Miss_M
Summary: Brienne’s first lesson in swordcraft.
Comments: 14
Kudos: 20
Collections: Trick or Treat Exchange 2020





	Nameday

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Amiodara](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amiodara/gifts).



> This is an extra treat. I own nothing.

Septa Roelle said that Brienne had to do her needlepoint and her knitting, and say her prayers, and do her sums and her reading. 

“But it’s my nameday,” Brienne cried, the indignation she felt too large for her body.

“Yes, your sixth. You’re a big girl now, Brienne. Will you also be a good girl?” 

“No!”

Septa Roelle’s expression hardened. “Naughty. Ungrateful. Wait till your lord father hears…”

“He’s not here!” Brienne squeezed her fists by her sides. “I heard the septon say the wind blew too strong, no ships would arrive in harbor till the weather turned. My father is not here.” 

In her heart, she knew that this was unfair, and she didn’t care, and she knew she was bad. 

Septa Roelle folded her hands inside the sleeves of her white robe. “Brienne, you will stop this at once, or I’ll tell cook not to give you anything sweet today. Not one bite of fig cake, not one honeyed apple!”

Brienne bit her lip and cast around for something to seize hold of – an anchor to hold her steady or a flaming arrow she could shoot into the world, she wasn’t sure which one she wanted more.

Her knitting needles stuck out of the yarn basket, taunting her. Brienne grabbed them up, held their ends in her fists, and bent both needles into a blunt V, like the freak Septa Roelle often accused her of being. She threw the useless needles at her septa, not as hard as she might have done, so they landed with a clatter on the stone floor between them. 

Brienne fled the room, blind with tears, Septa Roelle’s voice echoing after her. 

Down the stairs, through the great hall, out into the yard, she ran. She passed numerous servants, but no one paid her any mind or took notice of her tears. In the yard, she picked up a stick fallen from a cart loaded with firewood, circled around to the back of the armory, and set about beating the blank and indifferent wall of rough-hewn stone with the stick. Grunts and sniffles and half-formed words of rage fell from her lips. Her heart hurt. Soon her arm hurt too. The wind soughed all around her, the same wind which kept her father in the Free Cities, which he'd started visiting frequently since her mother's death.

A hand landed heavy on Brienne's shoulder and spun her around. She froze. 

Ser Goodwin loomed over her: a weathered man of fifty, nearly as tall as Brienne’s father and just as stocky, with grey hair and a black void in his mouth where he’d lost several teeth to a blow from a sword pommel, back in his tourney days. 

With his free hand, he plucked the stick from Brienne’s hand, or would have done, but her fist had closed so tightly around it, he could not take it from her without wrenching her arm out of its socket. He stared down at Brienne, and she stared at her shoes and his, bigger ones, and chewed her lip, her eyes prickling. 

“Walls feel nothing. This is what makes them useful. Nothing revealed, nothing given,” Goodwin said at last. 

Brienne looked up, confused, blinking at the sun behind him, a single tear slipping out and rolling down her cheek till the salty wind blew it off her skin. 

Goodwin smiled his crooked, pitted smile. “Would you be like a wall, or like the wind that howls and tears at the stones and mortar and spends itself to no avail?”

Brienne chewed this over. “A wall,” she said. Walls couldn’t get hurt. Every part of her hurt with the storm blowing inside her. 

Goodwin let go of her shoulder and her stick. “Come with me, then.”

He turned and strode off without checking to see if she followed. Brienne ran after him, watching that her legs didn’t get tangled with her stick. 

Goodwin led the way to the training yard, empty for the nonce. He went into the armory, a low building full of shadows which frightened Brienne; her father had warned her never to go in there, that it was full of sharp things that would harm her. Galladon had snuck in there once and cut his hand on a naked blade left lying around by a careless squire. Goodwin had given the squire a hiding, while Father had beaten Galladon for his foolishness.

Brienne drew circles in the dirt with her stick. She didn’t want to think about Galladon, nor about her mother or her sisters. It was her nameday, and she was alone and miserable enough as it was. 

Goodwin emerged from the armory bearing two practice swords – one long, the other smaller, meant for a youngling just starting to learn the warrior’s craft. 

“Let’s see you with this.” He offered Brienne the small sword, hilt first.

She dropped the stick on the ground and reached for it slowly, but Goodwin pulled it back, and she froze again, like he’d slapped her.

He frowned. “Would you leave a weapon lying around like that, on the ground, for just anyone to step on?”

Brienne shook her head, her cheeks burning. 

Goodwin jerked his chin at the armory wall. She picked up the stick, went and leaned it upright against the wall, and ran back. She took the short sword, which was heavier than her stick and bulkier, with a different balance. 

She mimed Goodwin’s stance as best she could, held her sword up as she saw him do, and waited for the first blow. It came harder than she’d anticipated, jarring her arm and running down her spine like a wave crashing against a cliff. Anger and grief burst bright inside her at such rough treatment, but she felt also proud that the master-at-arms was treating her as a serious pupil, not indulging her, his lord’s spoiled daughter. She regained her stance, held the sword with both hands and waited for the next blow. On the third pass, Goodwin jerked his elbow, to indicate that she should try to block his attack, and Brienne mimed the movement. When wooden blade met wooden blade, she recognized the reverberation down her arm and shifted her muscles, the angle of her arm, the tension in her back and pelvis, the better to meet and sustain the assault. 

“Mind your feet,” Goodwin said. 

Blushing that she’d let her feet slip her mind, Brienne corrected her stance again and awaited his next blow. 

After a while, Goodwin gestured with his free hand, beckoning her to him. He held his sword with one hand only, but Brienne needed both hands to wield her sword as she attacked. She was sweating and panting, her skirt tangling around her legs, her own breath louder than the wind in her ears. She darted left, then right, then tried to stand squarely in front of Goodwin and pepper him with blows, high, low, under and over, shift to the left, shift to the right, and again. 

By the time he called “Enough!”, Brienne was practically hopping in place, raining blows on him, or rather on his sword, which always managed to intercept her assault. Sweat dripped in her eyes, and her clothes were covered in dust. Septa Roelle would punish her for that, and for her insolence and temper from before. 

Brienne gripped her sword with both hands, knowing better than to use it as a stick to lean on, and gulped the cold sea air, a stitch in her side. “Will you teach me?” she blurted out.

Goodwin’s expression shifted too quickly for Brienne to comprehend. “‘Tis not a game for little ladies. ‘Tis hard work, and discipline, and pain like you’ve never known before. No, not even after the worst hiding you’ve had, and it’s pain every day, and endless practice, and sacrifice. And ‘tis not proper for women.”

“I want to learn. I want to know how to fight. Like the knights of summer, like Galladon of Morne with his sword Just Maid.” She knew all the stories. She looked at her feet. “Septa Roelle says I’m a slow, freakish child, not a proper little lady anyway.”

“She’s wrong about that.” Brienne looked up. Goodwin wasn’t smiling, but his expression warmed her through like a driftwood fire. “You’re a quick child, and strong. But you have to learn patience, and control, and not to show everything you feel on your face. Your face too should be a wall.”

Brienne felt herself smiling, though usually she tried not to because people teased her for her big teeth. “Then you’ll teach me.”

Goodwin frowned. “If your lord father permits it. And if he doesn’t, that must be the end of that. Understand me, girl? If he says no, I want no foolishness from you.”

Brienne nodded vigorously. She was her father’s last living child. Usually that was a source of grief, but right now it gave her hope: he would not refuse her this one thing she wanted more than anything else in the world. Well, anything that lay within her reach: she couldn’t have her mother or Galladon back. The Stranger took, and the Stranger did not give back. 

Goodwin pointed at the practice sword she clutched still in her hands. “First you must learn to care for your weapon. Come.”

He entered the armory, and after a moment’s hesitation on the threshold, Brienne followed – she must learn bravery if she would be a knight. 

The inside of the armory smelled like the blacksmith’s shop, but it was cool and dusty rather than hot and dry. Quarterstaffs leaned in one corner like a sheaf of wheat. Swords and maces stood in wooden stands, and the walls were hung with shields: many blank, some bearing the colors of House Tarth as well as lesser island Houses. 

One old shield, faded with time and much use, caught Brienne’s eye. Even in the dim light, she made out a great tree with emerald-green leaves, a falling star like a pearl on fire arcing above it, the tree’s roots seeming to grow from both land and sea. She put out her hand and ran her fingers over the old paint. The wood felt splintered and rough under her fingers, a contrast to the painted beauty of the image. She felt Goodwin’s eyes on her, and though he didn’t scold her, she felt too shy to ask whose colors those were.

Goodwin clicked his tongue and pointed at the stand that held wooden practice swords. She put hers away, as he did his. They left the armory together, Brienne stealing one last glance at the fabulous shield. _I’ll come back to you_ , she thought before returning to sunlight and wind and the sounds of squires and young knights entering the practice yard for their daily training.

She froze in her tracks at the sight of them, noticed several looking at her in surprise, confusion, some starting to laugh. 

“Will you let them put you off?” Goodwin said. “You’ll have to learn and practice alongside them.”

Brienne scowled, shook her head. She’d known little kindness from boys, apart from Galladon. A part of her wanted to run away and pretend nothing had happened since she’d thrown some ruined knitting needles at her septa, but Ser Goodwin had offered her the gift of his time and his skill, and she _wanted_ this. She could almost taste the lingering joy of her blood singing, the jarring blows running down her arm, her whole body straining to probe her opponent’s defenses. 

“Do I start today?” she asked. 

Goodwin laughed. “Not in those skirts, you don’t. Get your septa to alter some of your late brother’s practice clothes for you, and come back tomorrow after you break your fast but before your lessons. Mind that you don’t keep me waiting, girl.”

Brienne nodded firmly, then performed an awkward curtsy, just in case he expected one. Goodwin bowed to her, and Brienne felt that he wasn’t laughing at her. 

She collected her stick, mindful of not leaving things strewn about for just anyone to find or trip over, and returned to the keep. She added the stick to the pile of firewood by the fireplace in the great hall, then climbed the stairs to her room. She would need to apologize to Septa Roelle before she could request some of Galladon’s old breeches and shirts to wear to the practice yard. She could just imagine the objections her septa would raise, the extra prayers she’d give Brienne for her perversity. Brienne was very hungry too after her exertions and feared that she’d be forced to skip the midday meal as punishment. 

Halfway down the hallway to her septa’s room, Brienne realized that Ser Goodwin had told her she could start learning swordcraft on the morrow, even before her father returned from Essos and Brienne could ask his permission. Goodwin must have believed that her father would prove biddable, for he would not have risked crossing his lord just to please a child. 

Brienne hugged that knowledge to her like a little flame she could carry with her everywhere, cupped in the palm of her hand like the Crone’s lantern lighting her way and keeping her safe, as she steeled herself to knock on Septa Roelle’s door.


End file.
